July 19, 2006

friday magic madness

my last day in az started out with an unexpected turn of events on the results of the systems explore face-to-face much to the disappointment of both the ccsd and ccie folks who attended the now defunct download session. i could see arjun was extremely disappointed when our eyes crossed during the very brief download session. we decided to just head out for lunch at pei wei's which was actually one of my favorite restaurants in az (introduced to me back when cynthia & nev used to be my tour guides in chandler). at least lunch was good enuf to whisk away what just happened.

juan and i met larry and gizie at malee's in scottsdale around 720ish and since we were only a small group, there was a table ready for us. we got around munching on some fried mushy crab dumplings (?) and then later on had my uber favorite pad thai noodles, drunken dragon noodles, yellow curry chicken and then tropical pineapple (shrimp, scallops & chicken). the tom yum soup we had before the meal was excellent - it was the perfect tom yum soup i had ever. needless to say, we left the place smiling at what an awesome dinner it was. since papeco, mindy & jessica will be meeting us much later, we decided to hang out at one of the sports bar, giligins. now giligin's is a cool, unpretentious hangout place to be if you're in college or something because beer was cheap. we had a pitcher of bud light which was a bit stale while we chatted a bit. the only saving grace of giligins was that there was this super goodlooking blonde which i thought looked uber HOT!!! gizie agrees super hawt daw!

we decided to go to another bar right after, the name of which escapes me now and had 2 more bud lights (4 bud lights na, raise the bar!!!!) where larry's friend, brent, joined us for a few drinks. mindy popped out soon and told us they will be hanging out at sugar daddy's and will meet us there. we left soon after we finished our drinks and decidedly was planning to ditch them by pretending i was drunk (well tipsy was more like it). now since i have not been always good at saying "no" on the phone (especially on gimiks), i couldn't say "no" to jess when she gave me the "i stayed here in phoenix at my own expense for your last night. don't ditch us." geez, who can say "no" to that? guilty guilty. hahaha

so we said we'd stay for some 30 mins and met up with mindy, jessica and papeco. now these guys were bent on getting me drunk so they ordered 1 round of washington apple (crown royal, sour apple pucker & apple cranberry juice) and jess ordered me a redbull vodka drink. we were actually having a lot of fun that before we knew it, we were having our 4th round of washington apple and i was sipping on my redbull vodka drink non-stop on the side. we didn't mind taking lots of pictures, even convinced papeco to show us his very sexy six-pack abs (inggit!). it was surprising to see papeco drinking a lot that night being the disciplined gym-goer that he is toting his protein bars and protein drinks everywhere. we finished probably around 1am and decided to go home since jess and papeco both had early flights that morning.

i decided to ride with jess, mindy & papeco since most of us were staying at the windmill. mindy was our designated driver that night and this time around we decided to drive papeco's PT cruiser with the top down - no "winds of hell" this round. we were feeling 80's music and belted our hearts out to tiffany's "i think we're alone now" (baduy no!), poison, wham, madonna and a whole array of artists until we got to the windmill. i gave mindy, jessica & papeco big strong hugs because i am really going to miss hanging out with them. the past seven weeks with these people have been really awesome - from lunches watching the world cup at teakwoods, drinks at mcduffy's watching the phoenix suns, and those late night margaritas at kona grill. i will surely miss them but i am glad we went and stayed at sugar daddy's more than the 30mins we planned for, it was a great night to cap my seven-week trip.

more pictures @ late night in az - 071406

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